Inside the Impact: Wheatley Elementary Finds The Hook

Posted: March 1, 2018

Now that Mrs. Clayton-Taylor’s 5th grade students have decided on their We Day project idea, the real work begins. For their local act of compassion, the students decided to focus on a campaign to uplift their community and create a song that conveys the exact same message.

The first step in making the We Day project a reality was inviting Mr. Glover, the Family Resource Director at Wheatley, to talk to students about a slogan. As he talked to students, they brainstormed ideas they would have an impact on the community. Previously, students learned about the poetry of Tupac and Mr. Glover shared the song, California Love with the students! The students loved the chorus of the song and suggested that it should be the slogan for their We Day project. The song particularly hit home with the Wheatley students because their school is located in the California neighborhood in Louisville, Ky. This was a huge part of the process in implementing lessons that merge the Kentucky Core Content and the We Day curriculum.

Next, after students created their slogan, Mrs. Clayton had to prepare the information they would be using for their song. In doing this, she found news articles that were specific to California Area violence and contacted Councilman David James for accurate 2018 Homicide Data for the California Community as well.
Ms. Clayton’s students are not strangers to the song writing process. To get things moving along, she provided students with beats to choose from. The students were so excited and immediately began jumping up and down in anticipation of what their possible song would sound like.

At this point, Mrs. Clayton started to ask her students questions about the purpose of the song. The students shouted out, to stop the violence in the community. She then wrote that word on the chart paper and put students in groups to find all the words that rhymed with violence. The students were given an iPad to help them easily find words that rhymed perfectly and were near rhymes. As they found each rhyme, she encouraged students to play with the words and put them into phrases to come up with a possible hook to their song and to use the beat on the iPad to see how they could use the phrase along with the beat.

As a group, they all agreed on the best verses and even combined some of the verses together to come up with a great hook. While the song is still being composed, Mrs. Clayton-Taylor’s 5th graders are excited about this We Day challenge and can’t wait until the entire song is finished and premiered at We Day Ky 2018!

Stay tuned to the We Day Ky blog to see what Mrs. Clayton-Taylor’s students mix up next.